Carry on Castle: Living with Grief

It was a given that Dan and I would take care of his parents when they got older. He was the youngest and his mother’s only biological son. We knew his mom would outlive his dad by quite a few years, and we would be there for her after that. This was the plan before we got married, and I was fine with it. I loved his parents. It was an unspoken oath, but everyone knew about it.   Dan’s mom, Pat, lived in a world of boys. She had a husband, five stepsons, and Dan. She was ecstatic to have another girl around the house. Finally she had someone around who could talk about something other than cars and computers. The first Valentine’s Day after Dan and I started dating, Pat got me a stuffed kitten, just because she could. Those stinky boys didn't want stuffed animals anymore.   When Dan and I got married, I brought my wedding dress (which was my mother’s) over to Pat’s house to try on. After she oooed and aahed, I said, “Now I just need to find a veil!”   “I still have my veil! Let me

I think my daughter is getting to the point where she might be aware that I blog about her.  There may be a day in the near future (if it hasn't happened already) where she will see my blogs on the internet. That will be a fun conversation. She's growing up so fast I don't even call her Baby Girl anymore because shes not one, no matter how much I want her to be. She's 14 and a freshman in high school. I should really come up with a new name for her. Her therapist and other smart grief people have told me many times that children will grieve at every developmental stage. Every time their brain grows, they will think about death differently and grieve accordingly. I don't think her brain has been growing lately. Her dad died when she was in second grade, I don't even remember that year and I don't think she does either. There was a point in my life where I didn't think she was gonna make it through 4th grade. That year was full of panic attacks and rage fo

Annual Stults Family BBQ 2013 For years after Dan died I hated the 12 of every month. Dan died on the 12th of January. Every time the 12th rolled around it was going to be an awful day. It marked another month that Dan was gone from this world. I planned very little for the 12 of each month and if possible nothing at all so I could hide in my hole, because it was an awful day. I knew it would be, I was expecting it. I run away to the beach every 12th of January because nothing good can come on that Day. Everyone knows holidays are hard we expect them to be. We miss our loved ones on the holidays. It's a given. I've learned that my birthdays and Mothers day are gonna be a wash for me. My kid gets weird on those days, just weird, something about holidays for her mommy trigger her grief for her daddy. I haven't figured out why yet but I have definitely experienced it. Those special days fort me honestly suck and thats just the way it is now. It's no fun going out to dinner

                                                                Dan and I around 2011 I wrote this for a writing contest about milestones. Writing about every grief milestone would take a book and I had a word limit so I couldn't do that. I tried to do the really big ones. I have not had a particularly eventful life. When I was eight, my parents moved, but they took me with them. At ten, I had a pretty bad accident, but I came out of it fine. My husband and I met at sixteen, and at nineteen, we went against all good advice and got married. I gave birth to our daughter when I was 27.   I loved our boring, normal life. We were living our happily ever after. I was a stay at home mom, Dan was finishing up grad school. Everyone says this kind of thing at funerals, but Dan really was the most amazing person I’ve ever met in my life. He wanted to save the world: the people, the animals, the ecosystem. He wanted to make the world better, and he was. I loved our little family and couldn